Maggie
- Pronunciation
- [Ma-ggie]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Abbreviation Of Margaret. A Pearl.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Maggie
Maggie originated as an English short form of Margaret (see separate entry on Margaret for the Persian-Greek-Latin etymology meaning "pearl"). Maggie has been used as a casual diminutive of Margaret in English-speaking countries since at least the 18th century, transitioning from nickname to standalone first name in 19th-century American naming.
The name's most influential cultural anchors include the iconic Maggie of Tennessee Williams's 1955 play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ("Maggie the Cat"), played by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1958 film; American actress Maggie Smith (1934–2024, the multi-Oscar-winning British actress whose career through Downton Abbey, Harry Potter, and many others spanned over six decades); and the fictional Maggie Simpson of The Simpsons (1989–present, the youngest Simpson child).
The contemporary American Maggie surge is part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Sadie and Hattie. The name climbed from outside the US top 200 in 1990 to the US top 200 girls' rank by 2014 and the top 200 since. The name's appeal is its compact warm register — two short syllables, soft consonants, instantly readable, and the in-built friendly-vintage register that contrasts with longer formal names. The name reads as both classical-vintage and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since Maggie is itself a nickname-shape — Mags, Mag, Mag-Mag, and the rare Magic each occasionally appear; the longer formal Margaret is sometimes used as Maggie's official-document version. International variants are minimal since the name is essentially English-language; the related Margaret family across European languages provides adjacent cultural anchors.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Maggie
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Maggie by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2007 with 1,874 girls named Maggie (girl rank #181 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #294 for girls (1,041 US births). That's 113 places below its 2007 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Maggie Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Maggie the strongest states are Wyoming, Arkansas, West Virginia.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wyoming | #96 | 16 |
| 2 | Arkansas | #124 | 215 |
| 3 | West Virginia | #129 | 126 |
| 4 | Alabama | #138 | 302 |
| 5 | Tennessee | #138 | 464 |
| 6 | Mississippi | #145 | 176 |
| 7 | Kentucky | #149 | 275 |
| 8 | Montana | #154 | 29 |
| 9 | Utah | #154 | 257 |
| 10 | North Carolina | #186 | 500 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arizona | #564 | 117 |
| 2 | Florida | #538 | 303 |
| 3 | California | #479 | 712 |
| 4 | Nevada | #474 | 20 |
| 5 | New York | #472 | 358 |
| 6 | Connecticut | #426 | 68 |
| 7 | New Jersey | #426 | 179 |
| 8 | Maryland | #424 | 128 |
| 9 | Virginia | #384 | 206 |
| 10 | Texas | #381 | 805 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Maggie in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Maggie?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Maggie to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Maggie against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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